Hero Time
by Reiders
Summary: Happily ever after. Something fairy tales exult. Something people yearn for, a goal to achieve. So how come he was sent back. He knew that he couldn't interfere too much or he would risk their happily ever after. Even if he had to do it again, Jaune Arc would ensure that those he cared about would achieve their happy ending. Even if he wouldn't be able to enjoy it.
1. I Miss the Misery

**I live!**

**Which is actually very surprising!**

**I planed to have this out in April after Easter but when I went back to Paris I was involved in a car accident that not only put me in the Hospital for months it also destroyed my computer and my phone, I was almost completely off the grid internet wise. To top all this off it was discovered that I was a type 1 diabetic, which is extremely rare for somebody my age and health. So my last six months sucked majorly and have stopped me from being able to work on my stories.**

**The one good thing about it was that I had all my stories backed up on a hard drive so I didn't loose anything important.**

**All that being said, I should be able to put out my stories out more quickly now.**

**For those first joining this story, this chapter is the official first one even though it was posted after chapter 2 which will be edited when I get to that portion of the story, timeline wise.**

**Story Start**

* * *

We are the Remnants!

Ages past, perhaps we weren't such but today there is no doubt that we are just a pale imitation of was once a host of mighty civilizations. We once ruled the world, there was nowhere our influence hadn't spread, not even space was safe from us, nothing we couldn't accomplish and no achievement that wouldn't be met, given enough time.

But humanity was never a peaceful race, though we had accomplished more than any other species on the planet, humanity's true nature hadn't changed one bit since the Stone Age.

We killed, fought, warred and destroyed!

All our achievements, our progress, served only to make the scale on which we fought greater. What once was conflict between individuals or groups became war between nations. Once men harnessed the destructive power of rock and bone now they fought with technology and bombs.

Eventually, human nature reared its ugly head once more and our race's killing power surpassed its power of creation.

Details, to this day, are hazy at best. What is known is that it decimated all of humanity till only fragments remained. Where once, we ruled all over the world, now only a few places were still hospitable.

But humanity persevered, not giving up.

Some progress was of course lost; some of it was better left lost. Some progress advanced at unbelievable rates. Humanity was well on its way to recovery, maybe in only a few centuries it would reach the point where it was before or even surpassing that. What could have been was never discovered however because they came!

The Grimm!

Nobody knows from whence they appeared. They could have been a product of the fallout of the previous civilization, leftovers from a time when the moon was whole. They could have been an experiment gone horribly wrong. Perhaps, the planet had simply had enough and created a monster to destroy those who would abuse it.

In the end all that mattered was the Grimm hated humans with a passion and wouldn't rest until all of the species was extinct. They were good at it too.

Humanity was on verge extinction; only a tip of the scales could have sent the entire race into the oblivion of history. Then humans discovered Dust and the world changed once more. Harnessing the power of Nature's Wrath, the leftovers fought back, slowly but surely pushing little by little until they had carved themselves a place in the world.

Now that humanity is centered, safe behind walls of steel and bodies, once more human nature rears its hideous visage; wars once more break out, discrimination, hatred and corruption runs rampant! This is a world of bloody evolution; we climb over the bodies of our foes in order to progress.

Civilizations rise and fall, technologies progress and regress but human nature has not moved forward one iota!

But what can we do about that?

After all, we are but remnants.

"…ne!"

"...ke up, Jau..!"

"..me on!"

What was with the yelling? Ugh, my head hurts so much; can you keep it down you ruddy woman? Let me sleep damn it!

"Jaune!"

"All right, all right, I'm up. What do you want?" As Jaune slowly opened his eyes, careful not to do it too fast and aggravate the headache pounding in his skull, he tried to take stock of his situation through his blurred vision. He was lying on the ground, in a forest of some sort judging by the twigs and roots poking into his spine.

That wasn't too rare, sometimes when he got too deep into his meditation he ended up falling asleep without realizing it. What was odd was the fact that his head hurt so much and his vision was blurry. If he had simply fallen asleep, he might have hit his head without waking up, but by now his semblance should have automatically reset his body to the point where it wasn't injured. He had already reached past the point where the self-healing factor became subconscious.

Jaune didn't consider the possibility that he was assaulted; if anybody ever discovered where his hideout was he would have been shocked, not only was it well hidden, looking only like another mountain from a distance, it was also surrounded by forests filled with Grimm. If that wasn't enough, he was on the Dark Continent, close to the edges, granted, but still well beyond where any person in their right mind should visit. Good thing he wasn't in his right mind, isn't it?

At this point his instincts were so developed from his decades spent in the wild that even when he slept, rare as it was, he would feel any danger approaching long before it got close enough to do him harm.

Besides, if anybody even found him while he was sleeping, he doubted he ever wake up again. The price on his head had reached absurd amounts after last year's escapade. He still had to fight off the occasional bounty hunter but so far none of them had reached far enough into his territory to be a real problem.

"Come on Jaune, are you all right?"

There was that voice again, it sounded familiar but nobody should be here. Had his solitude finally reduced him to insanity? If so, why was his inner voice so feminine? Jaune liked to think himself manly enough that the voices in his head would at least sound like something out of a gritty action movie.

"Jaune!"

"I'm good, I'm good"

Indeed he was, his semblance had finally kicked in, his headache was slowly dying down, which meant he had had it for a while, but his eyes had cleared right up, allowing him to look at the woman yelling at his side.

Pure emerald captured his eyes right away; pools of deep green that were brimming with worry and kindness. Slowly his vision expanded a little more allowing Jaune the opportunity to take in the whole image. Bright red hair held behind a bronze headband, bronze armor, a shield and spear lying off to the side, the woman was very familiar.

"Pyrrha?"

Though what she was doing here he had no idea. Last he had heard, only a month ago, she was being trained by Glynda in order to become the next headmistress of Beacon. Why was she out here in the wilds, weeks from any sort of civilization? How had she found him?

Taking a closer look, she looked very different from the last time he saw her on the news. She looked younger, much younger. While the years had been very kind to her, as it had to all his friends from what he could tell, her beauty had become a more mature beauty than when he had met her. But right now, she looked just as she did the day they had first met.

"Come on Jaune, are you all right?" She asked, shaking his shoulders a little, thinking he was hurt by the way he blinked confusedly at her.

"Pyrrha?" He asked once more.

"Yes Jaune! I'm Pyrrha, are you all right?" She was becoming slightly exasperated by the way he wasn't answering her question.

"I'm fine." He sat up slowly, taking the time to look around before standing up. He was in a forest as he should be but the forest was all wrong, wrong types of trees, wrong temperature, wrong undergrowth, everything he was looking at wasn't to be found anywhere near his territory. As he made to stand, he stumbled slightly, his feet not responding as he thought they would. Pyrrha hastily grabbed him, making sure he didn't fall over.

Jaune recovered easily enough, slowly making sure he was stable and was finally able to stand at his full height.

"What going on?" He asked more to himself but Pyrrha heard and decided to answer.

"When I tried to activate your Aura you just collapsed, you collapsed and passed out for maybe two minutes before you woke up. I was very worried when I couldn't rouse you."

"Aura?" He asked once more, sounding like a broken record.

"You know, the force field I told you about?' She smiled a little, remembering the way he had described the manifestation of a person's soul.

"Oh yeah," he answered slowly, more to stall for time than actual agreement.

"I swear this doesn't usually happen! Awakening someone's Aura is usually a relatively simple process, depending on the size of the Aura then the person doing the awakening might get a little tired, but that's it!" She seemed a little nervous to him, trying hastily to explain herself. Did she think whatever happened was her fault?

"Relax, I'm fine, just a little disoriented is all." He wasn't even lying, his headache was gone and his body felt fine, if a little uncooperative, but he was still terribly confused as to what was going on.

Was he dreaming?

Dreaming about his friends wasn't rare; in fact the few times he actually chose to sleep they were often the source of his dreams and nightmares. But this was too lucid, too clear to be a dream.

Perhaps he had been placed in some form of illusion-based semblance then, he knew something like that was possible, proven by Neo years ago. But if that were true, for what purpose were they doing it? Looking around once more, he didn't notice anything that struck him as out of place.

Maybe it was lure him into a false set of security?

No, anybody who could have gotten close to him while he was asleep would have had no reason to place him in an illusion. They would have simply cut off his head, brought it back to civilization and reaped a profit so huge they would never have to work again in this lifetime or the next.

"That's good," Pyrrha let loose a relieved sigh, shaking Jaune from his thoughts. "I was really worried for a moment there when you didn't wake up."

"I'm alright, really," he was starting if repeating himself was going to be a thing now. "Why don't we just continue?" Continue what he had no idea, but they couldn't simply stay here in this forest.

"All right," the Pyrrha lookalike was still staring at him worriedly but she seemed to accept his answers. "We should get going, the temple is supposed to be in the north so we shouldn't be too far."

"Temple, right!"

"Jaune?"

"Yes?"

"You're going the wrong way."

"… I knew that, just making sure you knew where we were going, that's all."

The next few minutes passed in silence, companionable but no less quiet, broken up by Jaune occasionally stumbling but revering quickly. Pyrrha was still occasionally sending glances back towards her partner, making sure he was all right and still following her.

Jaune on the other hand, was incredibly tense; he had recognized the flora as being indigenous to the area around Vale and wasn't exactly comfortable being so close to a major kingdom capitol with no clue as to what was going on.

Trying to piece together what was going on, he started to think back, trying to think of any reason something like this could happen and how he could be so far from his territory without remembering it.

At dawn the day before, after getting up from meditating, he done the usual routine: clean himself in the spring, which was still as cold as ever, fixed a hole in his shirt he had gotten the day before, using some of the material he had swiped while in the kingdoms a few months back, then killed himself a nice fat boar, enough food to last him the week. He was thankful that Grimm didn't need to eat thus didn't kill wildlife, leaving him plenty of game to hunt.

Then he had headed south, a Nemea had been only a few days from his territory, and so he had dealt with it easily enough. On the way back he had decided to pick a few herbs and spices, he was running low on soap and teas as well so had picked what he needed to from there. He always felt a bit of pride when he did something like that, not needing anybody to survive and even thrive in an inhospitable environment. Granted he still needed to sneak back into the kingdoms every few months to get some tools, thread and other miscellaneous thing that he couldn't produce himself.

And if he checked up on his friends while he was there, so what? Maybe they needed a little healing, getting rid of some scars or sum such. The only time he really needed to do anything was that time Yang and Blake had tried to go on another hunt for him but couldn't make it past the Islands, teeming with Grimm as they were.

From what he had heard of the mission, three weeks after they had returned, they had made it further than anybody else but while Blake, Yang and the other two hunters with them were dealing with a heard of Goliaths they had been taken by surprise by a pair of Crocotta.

Blake had been left to take care of the Goliaths, easily done because she out numbered them but it would still take a while. Yang had taken on a Crocotta by herself easily enough; the other two hunters found themselves out matched by the speed of the other canine Grimm. Yang had finished hers off in time to pull one of them away from its gaping maw but had left an arm behind. From what Jaune heard in the bar, he was disguised and using it to find information, the loss of a limb had given the blonde enough power to not only kill the Crocotta with one hit, it had also reduced the mountain on the island to a large hill.

Feeling guilty about the entire thing, on top of his usual guilt, he decided to return her limb. He knew where she lived, just as he knew where all his friends and family lived. Yang lived with Blake on the edge of Vale, close to Beacon and near the Schnee Vale headquarters, he found out by following them that one time after they graduated, totally not stalking, merely making sure he knew where to go to help them out when if they needed it.

He had waited till Blake had left the house, hiding from her senses was harder than Yang's, before sneaking in, using the skills he picked up on the run to pry open a window in the living room. He had been lucky that Yang had been asleep in their room, having been discharged from the hospital only a few days ago, told to get some rest while they called for a prosthetic limb.

Because she had been asleep and Jaune had been carful not to make a sound, a rather easy thing to do when you live in the dark continent and have to sneak up on your meals, he also had no ill intent so Yang had slept on, completely unaware even as her body was fully restored to post injury status.

Jaune hadn't had a good time about it though, over three weeks of phantom pain from an arm that wasn't there on top of all the other bruises and damages she had accumulated on the way back, even the ones her Aura had healed, then everything that the hospital had needed to do to her arm to make certain it would be able to handle a prosthetic, all of it compressed down into a second.

The pain had been enough to make him pass out for a while, only coming to when he heard the door downstairs open. From what he could tell, he had only been out an hour at most but it was enough for Blake to return home.

He quickly turned his semblance inward, making it recycle the oxygen in his blood, meaning he didn't have to breath. He could keep it up for a half hour easily, an hour if he pushed it. Being like this was incredibly draining but he could manage. Now that Blake wouldn't hear him breathing he had to find a place to hide.

No way could he go back downstairs if the footsteps on the stairs were anything to go by, and the master bedroom doorway was visible from the top of the stairs so that left it out. The window was locked; too much time to get it open and the closet was too much of a risk, which left one place.

Thus, Jaune Arc, Most Wanted Man in all four kingdoms, once leader of famous team JNPR and deemed biggest threat to mankind hid under a girls bed, something he is still ashamed of to this day.

Blake came back in to check on her partner only to discover that she had made a full recovery, Yang was no longer _handi_capped.

…

Goddamit Yang!

Almost two decades away from the girl and she was still getting him to make bad puns, granted he had come to enjoy them, one of the few people that did, but making them while hiding under a bed with a pair of girls that want to hunt him down not even feet away was so not the time!

Anyway, Yang had woken up by that point and between the two of them it didn't take them long to realize that it had been Jaune that had healed her. Yang had been so mad that he had been in the room with her without even realizing it that she had punched a wall.

Neither realized that the man of the hour was hiding under the bed paling as they described in vivid detail what they were going to do with him when they got their hands on him.

After a few moments of terror inducing talk, both had set out to find him, thinking him to still be in the area. They had easily discovered the open window downstairs and assumed he had already left they immediately gave chase.

Meanwhile, Jaune got out from under the bed, pale but no worse for wear, he restored the hole in the wall, closed the window and, after making sure the coast was clear, walked out the front door, making sure to lock it because they had forgotten to do so in their rush after him.

Thankfully they didn't alert the authorities so he was able to get out of Vale easily enough.

All in all, a good days work!

…

What had he been thinking about again?

Oh yeah, trying to retrace his steps to figure out what was going on. Sometimes he got so lost in thought, a side effect of having spent so long alone with only the occasional visits from Raven or Cinder.

One time he had spent the entire day contemplating the color orange and its place in the universe. That had been an odd day; maybe he had eaten some bad mushrooms or something. But then, wouldn't his semblance have purged it from his body, he knew it automatically did so for poisons but what about hallucinogens, something to test later.

Come to think of it what made his body reverse until things were purged from his body, after all, everything ever eaten contains trace amounts of harmful substances, so how did the body tell what to purge and what was food? Was it something he did subconsciously? Perhaps it was messages sent directly to the brain and …

ARggggh, he was doing it again!

Focus! Retrace your steps!

After gathering some ingredients he had noticed signs of a solitary Goliath passing through his territory on his way back. Goliaths were pack Grimm, they were only alone when they had either just evolved or were about to evolve, judging by the size of the trail it looked like it was about to evolve. Near evolution is always when Grimm are at their most dangerous so Jaune had been cautious even if it was only a single Goliath. He had dealt with it without much trouble though before heading back to his mountain.

By then it had been midafternoon so he had read a few more books from the archives, one on advanced mathematics and how it pertained with quantum physics the other a fiction novel. He had finished them a little past sunset, a perk of being a fast reader, after decades of practice, and so he decided to meditate and practice with his semblance some more.

The night before he had managed to achieve rate of four times the normal speed, today he was aiming to start trying to achieve five times the acceleration. The last thing he remembered was sitting and delving into his semblance before… What? What happened afterwards?

…

He got nothing; he vaguely remembered starting to accelerate his internal body so that he processed time at now four times normal speed. Then he would try and reverse it, slowing down his body to four times it's normal speed without altering his perception of time. Baring a revelation or some other form of technique he wanted to practice, that was his standard meditation, which he usually kept up until morning, not needing to sleep if he had eaten.

Jaune had reached the part where he was going to stop accelerating his perception and started slowing it down when everything went black.

So that direction was a bust, now Jaune tried to look at the situation from a different angle.

He constructed everything he knew about the situation he was in.

He was near Vale.

He was walking with Pyrrha, or somebody who looked a lot like a younger Pyrrha.

He was not being chased down and shot at by Pyrrha.

Pyrrha mentioned something about a temple.

Pyrrha mentioned something about awakening his Aura, which was ridiculous because his aura was awakened years ago…

…By Pyrrha,

… During the initiation,

… Where they had to find relics in a temple,

… To get into Beacon,

… Which is in Vale!

…

Holy Shit!

Either somebody created this entire scenario, either through illusion or some damn fine actors and makeup, in order to make him relive his initiation, something highly unlikely due to the fact that it would be pointless. Or his semblance had screwed up somehow and he ended up going back through time to when his Aura was first awakened which was also highly unlikely.

Though his semblance had to do with time manipulation, it was generally localized. Jaune mostly used it on himself, speeding up himself or his perception to give himself more time in a fight. He had a number of other tricks up his sleeve as well but for the most part he used his power on a small scale. No time travel or mass time freezes or reversals.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to travel into the past, but it had never born fruit.

When Jaune had made the discovery that his semblance wasn't the simple regeneration like he had thought for years, he had seen it as a way to make right all his mistakes.

Having time at your fingertips was a heady feeling and Jaune wasn't ashamed to admit that the thought that he could go back and change things, to not have to be forced into exile, to stay with his friends, to stay in the arms of the one he loved, had almost completely overrun his mind with hope.

But reality wasn't that convenient.

He had spent month's, years even, exploring the limits of his ability only to realize one thing; he couldn't go back in time. While his semblance would probably called something like Time Manipulation, as cool and powerful as that sounded it wasn't really traveling through time.

What Jaune could do was less about manipulating time than it was about manipulating perception of time. His abilities basically allowed him to trick an object into thinking that time was moving differently for them, not influencing the time of the whole world.

Take his regeneration ability for example: what he did was access information about the object, or body, from its previous state of being. He would then trick the body into thinking that it was once again at the time period he had designated. The pain he felt was because he had to understand, to live through the two points in time: the now and the moment he was trying to reset it at. For objects it wasn't a problem, they had no nerves, no concept of pain, but for anything alive then he had to experience every sensation they did between the two points in time.

Other applications were available too, he had found ways around the limit in his semblance but he had never, not once actually managed to interact with anything in the past, his power was limited to the present, meaning time travel was forever bared from him.

"Do you think this is it?"

Pyrrha's voice shook Jaune from his thoughts, ironically bringing him back to the present. It wasn't hard to figure out what she was talking about, the cave was very prominent, depictions decorating its walls and darkness further in, hiding the real threat behind a veil of velvet shadows.

That didn't stop Jaune from nervously swallowing the sudden influx of saliva in his mouth though.

The Cave was a very important, distinctive, memory for Jaune. Not only was it the first time he had worked with his partner but it had been the first of many terrifying situations that would follow all through out his Beacon career. For the first two weeks in the school, he had nightmares about it, dying at to the claws of the giant bug.

Before he had come to Beacon, he had faced a few Grimm by himself. Falsified documents or not, he wasn't planning on going there completely unprepared. The thing was, he had only really faced a few Beowolves and an Ursa, one at a time at that. He had mainly used his shield, taken his time and eventually took an opportunity to deal with them in one or two hits. It had been very safe, comparatively. It had in no way prepared him for initiation.

Jaune would eventually face larger, faster and far more dangerous threats but nothing really compared to the fear that the Deathstalker in the depths of this cave had given him. It had really opened his eyes to the dangers he would be facing, not enough to ask for help at this point, but enough to make him feel deep, cold, clammy fear.

Jaune was stronger now though; he was faster, more knowledgeable and overall better prepared to face the Deathstalker. He could kill it by himself, with little fuss, little problem and overall way easier. But should he?

If he was in the past, a big if, then did he have to repeat everything the same as he did the first time. Should he really try and change things, especially this early. Jaune knew of the butterfly effect, if he tried to change things now who knew what consequences it could have latter on.

If he didn't alert the Deathstalker then he might not end up on team JNPR, team RWBY might never form, if he wasn't flung by the stinger he might not hit Ruby as she fell, he might not be in a position to catch Weiss as she fell either, Weiss and Ruby might never learn to work together if they weren't pressed like in the first initiation.

Perhaps it was the other way around, maybe no matter what he did events would play out exactly like they had the first time around. The teams might be formed the same as before, the events come to pass in the exact same way, he might be forced into exile once more, leaving all he knew and loved behind.

He didn't know which would be worse: going through all that pain and loss again or the unknown of what could happen if he changed things.

Either way now would be a good time to test things out, if he was in the past as he suspected.

"I don't think this is it, it doesn't really look like a temple. Besides, the relics would probably be more in the open for people to find them, this place is too well hidden for that, I think."

Pyrrha looked a little unsure but thought about it for a moment before smiling and nodding her head.

"You might be right. And if we don't find another place we can always come back here later."

Taking her agreement, Jaune once more set out towards the north, Pyrrha in toe. From what he remembered, it should only take another minute of walking to get into the clearing with the chess pieces.

"So what made you want to come to Beacon?" Jaune had asked the question mostly because he wanted to test whether this was an illusion or not, he still wasn't entirely convinced that this was the past so sought to test out whether or not this was the real Pyrrha. At his question the champion blinked in confusion.

"What do you mean? I'm trying to be a huntress just like anybody else."

"What I meant is why Beacon specifically why not Haven. You are from Mistral right? That's where those tournaments you won were so I guessed that's where you were born and with your track record you should have had no problem getting into any school you wanted to."

From what he was told by Pyrrha, very few people knew why she had chosen Beacon over Haven in order to get her Hunter License. There had been mass speculation of course; some people thought that since she hadn't found anybody that could beat her in Mistral that she had sought out other and stronger foes in Vale, others believed that she had a lover in Beacon and was going to school there to be closer to him, those were only two of the many wild theories thrown around about Pyrrha's choice of school.

Before he had gone into exile only Jaune and her family learned the true reason why she chose Beacon. The truth was that she had chosen to go to a school out of her kingdom because she disliked her fame. While she was known throughout the world, Vale was nothing compared to Mistral. There she probably couldn't walk down the street without getting mobbed, here she at least could skirt by with a lot less fanfare, even if people still treated her differently.

This made it a good test to see whether this was really Pyrrha or someone else. While there was a chance that Pyrrha had told other people after he had left, Jaune found it highly unlikely that she would tell too many people because of how secretive about how much she disliked her fame. There was also the chance she wouldn't answer truthfully to Jaune right now for that same reason, after all they had only been partners for about twenty minutes now, not really enough time to build up to much of a bond.

Jaune was confident however that he would be able to tell if she was lying or not. It may have been over a decade ago but he had been her partner for four years, four years where he had been trained by her, slept in the same room as her, eaten with her and talked with her, Jaune doubted there were many people in the world who knew her as well as he did.

"It's a little bit awkward," she started with bit of strain in her smile, "but I wanted to get away from Mistral for a while, I just felt stifled there, and Beacon had such a good reputation that it was my first choice."

That was a good answer, telling a little of the truth without getting too close to home, but it wasn't her words that convinced Jaune that this Pyrrha was the real deal. The knight doubted even his partner was aware of it but when holding her weapons, when she was at her most comfortable, they acted as a sort of mirror to her mood. When cheerful or at least not burdened, she tended to keep her spear resting on her shoulder, when she was wary, her shield would unconsciously drift towards her chest, ready at a moments notice.

She also had a slight tick he noticed when she was lying or trying to hide something, her eyes would fall to her weapon, as if inspecting it or refilling the ammo and she would avoid eye contact and her words would come out only a tad slower. Here her eyes had fallen to the side rather than to her weapon and her words had come out at the same speed, indicating she was hiding something but the words were truthful enough.

"Well, I for one am glad you decided to come, I doubted I would get as nice a partner otherwise."

Her eyes came back up to look into his and her smile returned to full mast and her cheeks flushed a little from the compliment.

"Thank you."

"No problem, I think this is a start of a beautiful friendship." They shared a chuckle for a moment at his wording before the sounds of gunfire just ahead of them interrupted it. They shared a look before nodding to each other and rushing forward into a wide clearing.

Once able to see past the trees, they took stock of the situation from what they could see.

The clearing was rather wide, giving a lot of area to maneuver around. The forest surrounded it on the north, east and south sides. To the west was a large cliff face, atop which Beacon stood. In between the cliff and the clearing was a large gorge, a ruined stone bridge being the only link between the two places.

A round ruined structure stood in the center of the clearing, ruined white marble pillars held up large chess pieces, both black and white, though some were missing from the set. Around them stood two young women, one dressed in black and yellow respectively, though it was difficult to see their details from here. In front of the two women a girl dressed in red was running towards them and off to the side another woman was standing atop the corpse of a dead Ursa, Jaune and Pyrrha were just close enough to hear her when she spoke in a dejected voice.

"Aw, it's broken."

A panting boy ran up from behind her, while he tried to capture his breath he turned to his partner.

"Seriously, don't do that again Nora." To which Nora only stuck out her tongue at the young man.

While this was going on, Jaune paused for a second to do some quick math.

During the first initiation, if he really did come back in time, the blond had been flung in the air and had collided with Ruby, preventing her from being injured. This time however, Ruby was already on the ground when they arrived which meant that they were a few moments behind.

Jaune had been unconscious for a few minutes according to Pyrrha, meaning that would be behind from the start, but Jaune was pretty sure he was walking faster this time around, even if he did stumble for bit, so they regained some time there. They also hadn't gone into the Deathstalker cave so they gained a few minutes there but because they weren't being chased by the scorpion they hadn't run and instead had walked, meaning that they had lost a little time.

All in all it mostly should equal out so it wasn't a surprise that they were only a few seconds behind the original timing. The gunshots they had heard was probably Ruby using the recoil from Crescent Rose to allow her land mostly unharmed.

That meant that Weiss was still on the back of the Nevermore.

Sure enough, a faint scream could be heard from the sky. Looking up, Jaune could see a giant raven circling in the sky, a faint white dot on its back. As he watched, the young woman on the massive bird's back yelled something down at the trio of girls surrounding the temple, though what she said was lost in the wind from the distance.

"I told you to jump!" Yelled Ruby back towards her partner in the sky.

What followed was Weiss falling from the sky as she was shaken of the big bird's back. She was falling closer to the wooded area where Jaune and Pyrrha were than the center of the clearing so Jaune moved a little to into position then bent his knees.

"I got her!" He yelled making those present only now realize that they had two new people with had arrived. Jaune paused for a moment to time it just right, and then, with some Aura reinforcing his legs and a minor application of his semblance for extra speed, he rocketed upwards towards the falling heiress.

Jaune had timed it just right, he made contact right after the apex of his jump, meaning when he started falling down himself, this meant that there wasn't a collision from the upward and downward force, allowing him to grab Weiss in his arms without hurting her from the impact.

The two of them hit the ground only a few moments later; Jaune's Aura infused legs absorbing most of the momentum. Looking down dark blue met pale blue as Weiss tried to accept what had just happened.

"Just dropping in?" He really, really, reaaallllyyyy couldn't resist the pun, it was simply too strong for his weak will.

"Ha!" Yang snapped her fingers and chuckled when she heard him say that.

"… Put me down." Weiss mumbled as she stared at him incomprehensibly.

He put her down and aided her to her feet.

Not looking at him once, the heiress smoothed out her skirt before making her way over to her partner.

"You left me!" She yelled, point her finger accusingly at Ruby.

"I said jump."

"I don't think this is the time." Blake pointed out as she looked towards the sky, the Nevermore having turned around and was now coming back towards the group.

Jaune and Pyrrha quickly made their way to the temple as well, before turning to look to the sky, but not before Jaune quickly picked up the white rook piece resting on one of the pillars. He still wasn't certain whether things would play out the same way as they had the first time, if he was reliving the past, but that didn't mean he wanted to be on any other team than his own.

The group quickly laid down suppressant fire. Pyrrha and Ruby had the two longest-range weapons so they kneeled in front of the group, unloading bullet after bullet at the bird, for all the good it did. The two girls were geniuses when it came to fighting but this simply wasn't the best place to show off their skill set. Pyrrha's rounds were too small of a caliber to do anything than sting the beast, Ruby's crescent rose on the other hand had a much higher caliber and pack a much larger punch. It still wasn't enough to tear through the steel like thickness that was the Nevermore's feathers though, but it would give the bird a nasty bruise.

These problems could be overcome in a year's time, second year students would eventually learn how to infuse their Aura into their bullets and weapons making them much more effective, it was one of the reasons for the disparity of strength between school years. Of course all of that would be useless if the group didn't survive initiation.

Thankfully both girls managed to deter the Grimm from swooping down, now it just circled in the air above the temple, waiting for its chance.

As the eight initiates huddled in-between the pillars of the temple, keeping one eye on the flying Grimm and the other searching for any more threats, Jaune decided that now would be a great time to break the ice.

"So!" He said, an all to cheerful smile on his face as the rest of the group turned to look at him. "Introductions!"

The resulting deadpans he got from Ren, Blake and Weiss were glorious.

"The name's Long," Yang said, making her voice slightly deeper like in an old black and white movie. "Yang Xiao Long."

"Arc, Jaune Arc." He was more than willing to play along with his fellow blonde's game.

"I'm Ruby Rose." Goddamit, Jaune really thought they had a thing going there for a minute. He couldn't even be mad at her because she was just too damn cute.

"Hello, my name is Pyrrha Nikos, pleased to meet you." Pyrrha had the most wonderful quality of being able smile the sweetest smile even in the direst of circumstances.

"Blake Belladonna." Short and to the point, with a hint of sarcasm, that was definitely Blake all right.

"Weiss Schnee, an honor." Whenever she said that, Jaune could never tell whether she meant it was an honor to meet them or if they should be honored to meet her. Bah! First world problems!

"Nora Valkyrie, I like long walks on the beach, pancakes, sloths, hitting things, pancakes, Ren and pancakes!" This was all said really fast, like she thought they wouldn't catch it if she was too slow, or she was on a major sugar rush for one reason or another.

"Lie Ren." The boy barely acknowledged his partners strange habits, as he introduced himself clearly not the first time she had gone on a tangent like this.

"Now that we all know each other, what are we going to do about that," Weiss nodded her head towards the circling Nevermore.

"Well," Jaune began hesitantly, knowing full well that he hadn't made the best of impressions the day before initiation so there was a chance that they wouldn't take his advise seriously. "We could just wait for it to dive down and try to take it out then, but we risk other Grimm arriving while we wait. Or we could make a run for it now that we have our relics. The Nevermore will dive, and we can take it out while it is chasing us. Either way, we will have to kill it if we want to be able to climb the cliff and get back, otherwise it will try to shoot us down while we climb."

The group paused for a moment to consider Jaune's words before, one by one they nodded in agreement, having seen nothing wrong with his assessment of the situation.

"Alrighty then, lets go before anything else shows up!" Blake, Ren and Jaune all simultaneously sighed at Ruby's cheerful words.

"What?" The little reaper was quite confused when, in an odd form of synchronicity between two people who had just met, both Jaune and Ren put three fingers into the air before lowering them one at a time.

Three!

Two!

One!

As the last finger fell, a mighty crash resounded through the clearing. As the group turned, they saw a giant scorpion bust through the tree line. The Deathstalker Grimm was covered in bone white armor, its thick plating protecting it from head to tail, leaving only its eyes and mouth exposed.

"Lesson one on being a hunter: don't tempt fate, what can go wrong will go wrong." Jaune sighed once more before continuing. "Change of plans guys, can you four," he nodded towards Yang, Blake, Ruby and Weiss, "deal with the Nevermore while we" he pointed towards himself, Pyrrha, Nora and Ren "take care of the Deathstalker."

"Why those teams?" There was no challenge in Lie Ren's voice, merely curiosity at the choice of assignment. The other six teenagers once more turned towards the wayward time traveler for his explanation.

"It is probably better not to separate partners," the others nodded in agreement "Ruby has the weapon with the longest range so she is the obvious person to fight the airborne target which means that Weiss goes with her. Yang is Ruby's sister thus they probably know each other's fighting styles so she could provide aid rather easily and she would bring Blake with her. Besides, you four look agile enough to dodge the feathers Nevermore are known to shoot.

On the other hand, Pyrrha and me are the only two people with shields that will be needed to deal with the more physical might of the Deathstalker. That leaves Nora and Ren to helps us out and Nora's hammer will be a big help getting through the armor."

Once more agreeing with his reasoning, the group nodded and separated into their two groups. The four girls luring the bird away by making a run for the cliff as had been talked about before, while Jaune's group decided to take the initiative and rush toward the approaching insect Grimm.

In the few moments before his group was able to engage their foe, Jaune thought furiously over the situation. While he knew that tempting fate as Ruby had done was a bad idea, the Deathstalker hadn't simply appeared out of nowhere. That meant that it had already been advancing towards the clearing for a while, which meant it had left the cave for some reason. Had it sensed him and Pyrrha and chased after them? No, that couldn't be it, they had be walking at a relatively moderate pace once they had moved on from the cave, plenty of time for the scorpion Grimm to catch them. That meant that something had disturbed it in its cave, and then led it towards the clearing, all the while not being noticed at all.

There was another possibility, one that scared him to consider with all its implications.

When discussing time travel, if he really did travel through time, he still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't some weird dream or illusion, there were always a few theory's discussed but the two most popular had to do with changing the past. The first was that if you go into the past and change something, even something insignificant in the larger scheme of things, the time line branched creating a fork in the road so to speak, one path leading to the original future where nothing changed and the other having been altered in some way.

The second theory was the possibility that freighted Jaune at this moment. The possibility that relied on the concept of fate or destiny, if you go into the past and try and change something then you were simply ensuring nothing changed at all. Like if you went back to the past to try and save someone's life but instead were the reason they died in the first place. That kind of thing, as if something was forcing events to occur in so great plan, terrified the present Jaune because it meant that he had no hope of ever getting the ending he wanted.

Jaune could picture it now, without the Deathstalker appearing, the eight students would have easily handled the Nevermore. That would mean that they wouldn't be as close to their teammates right off the bat due to the tribulations facing such powerful Grimm early on forcing them to rely on each other. This could have great consequences latter, leading to teams breaking up or even leading to someone's death because they could trust their teammates or communicate properly with them when they needed to. Both teams JNPR and RWBY would later play huge roles in shaping the world so any event that threatened their destiny could very well have forced whatever cosmic entity that controlled fate to simply nudge the Deathstalker out the door.

His thoughts halted as he finally met the scorpion, his teammates only a few moments behind.

It first lunged at him, aiming to impale Jaune on its poisonous stinger. Jaune skillfully deflected it with his shield, not slowing down in the slightest as he rush through the opening to deliver a slash to its unprotected face that destroyed two of its eyes. It growled in pain as it attempted to capture him with one of its pincers only for him to nimbly hop backwards just out of its reach.

His friends arrived then, Ren and Pyrrha firing their weapons at the creature, not really doing any damage to it but distracting it for Nora to fire a few grenades under its belly. The Deathstalker teetered for a few moments, off balance from the force. Because it was unstable, when it went to grab Ren with its pincers, the young man was able to nimbly jump onto the claw before running up onto the Grimm's back. Stormflower opened fire onto the armored shell, further annoying the scorpion.

As Pyrrha switched her weapon to its sword form and engaging it in close quarters in order to further distract it from the martial artist on top of it, Nora switched to her hammer to try and break one of its hind legs.

An idea came quickly to Jaune's mind.

To tell the truth he still wasn't certain he was actually in the past and not in some sort of mind control situation and so he didn't want to reveal too much about himself, his strength especially if you could use it later to escape from whatever was going on. That was the reason he hand simply carved the deathstalker in two with his first strike and instead fought it defensively. But, if he was in the past or was being made to relive and recreate his initiation, then why not defeat the scorpion Grimm the same way they had done the first time around? Or recreate it as closely as he could get at least.

"Ren," with that in mind he shouted to his only male teammate. "Aim for the bottom of the tail, prepare to dodge! Pyrrha, distract it! Jump back when I say so! Nora, jump, hit the nail!"

Perhaps it was Jaune falling into old habits, not really elaborating on his plan and simply giving orders in short words, he was used to being so in sync with his teammates that they could tell what they each wanted from just a look. He had forgotten that if he really was in the past, then these three would have only known him for less than half a day and barely trusted him. Any other time they might have ignored him, not understood or failed to carry out the orders. But for some reason, against common sense all three of his companions grasped what he meant and nodded visibly even as they continued their fight.

Ren moved immediately, standing in the center of the creature's back and aiming at the point where the tail met the main body. Most people don't know this and even a good deal of hunters are unaware the between the tail and the torso, there is a patch of the body unprotected by armor. This is because the stinger has to lunge in front of the insect and armor plating at the joint would limit maneuverability. Not only wasn't it encase in the bug's shell, it was also extremely sensitive, comparable to the armpit on a human. So when bullets started piercing the soft tissue, the bug roared in excruciating pain and bent its stinger forward over itself, trying to use the armor higher on its tail in order to cover its sensitive area.

When it did this, Jaune jumped backwards slightly but still in the range of its claws. Trusting Pyrrha to protect his back, if she didn't he would know this whole situation was fake, he crouched down and raised his shield at an angle and called out "Nora!"

Sure enough the hyperactive Valkyrie ran towards him, her hammer deployed and ready to be swung. Once she was close enough, she swung it with all her might towards his shield while performing a jump that would put her almost perpendicular to the ground. Once her hammer made contact with his shield, she released one of her grenades, creating such a concussive force that, had Jaune not braced himself on the ground, he might have been sent flying. But because he knew what was coming and was prepared, instead of being sent flying, at the moment of impact he used his shield to push upwards, transferring the energy into momentum that sent Nora flipping through the air with a "Wheeeeeeee" of excitement.

As soon as she was in the air, Jaune once more jumped backwards, this time out of range of the Deathstalker while calling out "Pyrrha!"

Understanding immediately what he wanted, she too hopped backwards out of the pincer's range. Momentarily stunned at the cease of hostilities in front of it, the beast used this opportunity to try and rid itself of the annoyance on its back that was even now still aiming at the juncture between the tail and body.

"Keep firing" Jaune ordered to his teammate as he keenly watched the stinger move. "Right, crouch, left, backwards, now backflip off."

Ren did as he was told, intense concentration clearly displayed on his face as he never took his eyes of the week spot in the tail. First he sidestepped to the right, avoiding the stinger that wanted to gore him, and then he crouched as it swiped over his head, trying to smack him off. As he rose from his crouch he angled to the left, once more avoiding the stinger that sought to stab his chest. He then stepped backwards, he was now right above the thing's brain. Ren continued to fire at the tail at it was raised up above him in order skewer him, at the last second he performed a magnificent backflip off the creature's head, avowing the stinger completely.

When he landed he would be right in front of the beasts face, well within range. This would have been a problem had Nora, descending from the sky with a shout of joy, not swung her hammer down with extreme force magnified by her decent right onto the back of the point of the stinger, that had just before been poised to end Ren's life, now instead was smashed downwards into the Deathstalker's brain, killing it before Ren even had the chance to land himself.

The Grimm never even knew what killed it.

There was a moment where the four friends held their breath hoping that it was dead. It lay there, like a puppet with its strings cut before wisps of black smoke rose from its body as it started to decompose. The teammates finally let out a sight of relief once they realized it was dead, before cracking smiles at each other and even letting out a few chuckles.

"We got to go help the others!" Pyrrha said as remembered that there was a second Grimm to be dealt with.

"I don't think they really need our help." Said Jaune as he turned to watch as the future team RWBY dealt with their first real foe as a team.

Because Jaune's team took a lot less time to defeat the Deathstalker this time around, they were able to catch the final moves of the fight. They watched as Blake used the ribbon on her weapon to whip Yang into the air, where she collided with the Nevermore. The blonde kept its attention by firing numerous slugs onto its skull before onto its beak and, while holding it open with her considerable strength, released shell after shell into its open maw from Ember Cecilia.

Taking advantage of the distraction provided, Ruby and Weiss took the time to set up the final blow. Ruby was being held in place in some form of makeshift bow created by Weiss' semblance. Complex calculations passed in moments as they adjusted their aim in order make certain they wouldn't miss their opportunity.

With a yell, snow white released little red ridding hood as if an arrow from the bow. Goldilocks jumped free even as her sister crashed into the giant raven Grimm, her scythe extended in order to hook around the neck of the beast. The momentum of the attack brought Ruby and the Nevermore onto the side of the cliff nearby. There was a pause for a moment; the short girl then activated her semblance.

She became pure speed, running upwards on the face of the cliff, firing her weapon to create even more upwards momentum, going so fast that she overcame the nine point eight meters per second that gravity demanded. The Nevermore on the other hand was still too heavy for her to lift and so the bird was being pulled down by gravity and upwards by an even greater speed. Normally gravity would have eventually won through sheer persistence but the difference hung in the fact that the object-connecting Ruby to the Nevermore was in fact a scythe. A scythe with a rather sharp blade, the beast's neck never stood a chance as the blade cut through it like butter.

The body and head, now separated, tumbled down into the gorge below the cliff as Ruby continued her accent to the top.

Sharing smiles with his teammates Jaune, happy that the ordeal was over, they moved to join their compatriots on top of the cliff and complete their initiation.

If the others had known Jaune for longer they might have noticed that his smile wasn't one of relief but rather a small sad one, filled with nostalgia.

* * *

"Cardin Winchester, Russel Thrush, Sky Lark and Dove Bronzewing, you brought back the black bishop pieces, from here on out you will be known as team CRDL led by… Cardin Winchester."

Once both teams managed to make it back to the school with their respective chess pieces, they were led towards the auditorium and made to stand on the side as one by one the pairs that managed to make it through initiation were then put into teams by Ozpin.

"Jaune Arc," the headmaster called as the blond advanced to center stage. "Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren, you chose the white rook. You are now team JNPR led by… Jaune Arc."

"Congratulations Jaune." Pyrrha gave him a rather hard pat on the back.

"Way to go boss!" Nora gave him an excited pair of thumbs up.

"Good job." Ren's response was more muted but a small smile was still present.

Jaune barely acknowledged any of this except to give his new teammates a small smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Ever since they had reached the stage, emotions swirled in his heart. Longing, grief and most of all love fought each other for dominance. He had steadfastly tried to keep his eyes forward as he fought to not look at her. Jaune had no idea what he would do if he saw her now, he wanted to rush over to her, wrap his arms around her once more and kiss her so hard in order to convey the emotions that almost two decades of separation had welled up in his breast.

The problem lay in the fact that the woman he had at one point wanted to ask to be his wife barely even knew he existed, let alone remembered the two years of love they had secretly shared together.

By this point Jaune had accepted that it was probable that he actually was in the past, too many coincidences otherwise. This both filled him with joy and dread. On one hand, he could spend the next four years with his friends and those precious two years of love and happiness.

On the other hand Jaune was certain he could go through the pain of separation again. Again watch his friends hunt him down like a dog, watch his family be forced to hand their head in shame and watch helplessly as the woman he loves become engaged to another man.

He felt helpless; because the more he thought of it the less he believed he could do anything else than repeat the same actions a second time around. If he didn't become wanted millions of people would die, possibly humanity itself.

At the same time, Jaune couldn't really not try and reform the relationship with the woman he loved. The two years they had spent together were what had kept him going, helped him wake up in the morning, and helped him continue on even as the whole world turned against him.

Not only that, if he wasn't there he feared she might have gotten over the pains in her heart that stopped her from finding happiness. One of the only things Jaune was really proud of in his life was the fact that he had helped her get over the heartache that had plagued her. The proof lay in the fact even after his disappearance she still found happiness with someone else.

And so, with a self-depreciating smile, Jaune turned from looking at the stage where Ruby was once again made leader of team RWBY and instead looked towards her for the first time in almost two decades.

Looking just as beautiful as he remembered, she stood to the side stage, observing the proceedings.

Future Headmistress of Beacon Academy, world-renowned huntress and the woman he had once hopped would become Ms. Arc.

Glynda Goodwitch!

* * *

**Well, there you go, once again I apologies for the long delay, my next story updated will be The Beast, then the others. Hopefully I can get the next chapter for this story out by mid November.**

**Hoping to see you all soon,**

_**Reiders out!**_


	2. Battle of the Blonds

**I live! Mwahahahaha!**

**I just got back form a month and a half long trip around Europe (I already miss Paris T-T). Before I left I had decided to move Prices We Pay to another web site because of its nature. I didn't want to leave readers high and dry however so I will be replacing it with two stories I started while I was away. **

**Incidentally, Prices We Pay should be up this time next week at the latest and Fate/Freedom within the month.**

**This chapter is mostly a teaser as it would not be the first in the fiction, most likely the third or fourth, but I did want to write the whole thing if people weren't going to read it. If this one is not liked I will simply focus on my other ones so reader response is pivotal if you want this story continued.**

**You may be confused by what is going on because this wouldn't be the first chapter but this is mostly for readers to get a feel for the direction I am going.**

**That being said:**

**On with the show!**

***Edit:12/01/15**

**Just got a PM telling me that my line breaks were not showing up in my stories. Now I am going back through all of them to edit.**

* * *

There it was, flashing on the screen, his name next to hers. There was a moment of stillness in the air as everyone turned their eyes to the pair, he too turned to face her as a smirk formed on her lips.

"Jaune Arc and Yang Xiao Long, please move into the arena." Glynda's voice, damn he meant, Ms. Goodwitch's voice cut through the silence, shaking people from their stupor.

"Oh man, boy wonder is going to get his ass kicked!"

"No shit, I bet he doesn't even last five minutes!"

"I think you're giving him too much credit there, I say he doesn't even last a minute!"

Whispers started to pop up, slowly gaining in volume as the entire room started to proclaim his immanent demise with almost fevered zeal. It was somewhat expected if you thought about it. This was only the second week of term so they didn't really know how he fought, whereas Yang had fought two times last week, utterly decimating her first opponent despite their greater speed followed by the second one, a boy twice her size and three times her weight who she had pounded into a mound of bruised flesh, he had still yet to recover completely.

Even his team and team RWBY were giving him slightly fearful looks, with the exception of Yang herself who had a challenging smirk across her face. They had all seen Yang fight and the stuff she pulled when her team went up against the Nevermore was nothing short of amazing. It was acknowledged by both teams based on what they had seen during initiation, perhaps subconsciously, that Yang was perhaps the most dangerous and skillful of the eight teens with only Pyrrha up to her level, though which of the two were better they didn't know as they hadn't fought yet.

"You know, you don't have to fight Jaune." There was no mistaking the worry in Pyrrha's voice as she said that.

"That's right, you know we wouldn't think any less of you if you didn't." Ruby too was giving him a look as she chewed on her bottom lip, eyes darting between her sister and him.

"Don't worry guys, I'll be fine." It seems his statement wasn't too well received or believed.

The other four had varied in their expressions as well, Weiss had a small creasing of the brow as she looked to the board, Blake looked almost bored but a small light in her eyes conveyed well hidden interest. Ren's almost imperceptible frown was sharply contrasted by Nora's wide smile.

"Common fearless leader, kick her ass!" Nora's exclamation was received with dirty looks from Ruby, Pyrrha and Weiss surprisingly.

"Oh? Chickening out Vomit Boy?" Yang's taunt was met with a challenging smirk as they both turned to go retrieve their weapons and armor.

"If I did, then who would wipe that smug look from your face?" By her chuckle, she seemed more amused by his response than angered.

As soon as she turned away and he was alone, a serious look crossed his face.

This was good, this was very good and this was his chance, his first chance to help the seven people who had helped him so much in the past, future, whatever.

All of them had helped him immensely; dedicated hours of their lives into helping him get stronger, faster. They helped him study, they picked him up when he was down and they had been his first and best friends.

And he had done nothing to repay them.

Oh, he certainly tried to when he could. Giving words of advice when he thought they were required, helped lead his team to the best of his ability and healed them when they were injured. He tried to do anything in his power to repay the massive debt he owed them but it was never enough.

His advice could have just as easily come from someone else, Pyrrha could have led the team better and if he had been stronger they wouldn't have needed to be healed in the first place.

After all they had done for him, what had he done? Spat on it and stabbed them in the back, at least in their eyes. They had to spend the rest of their lives living with his forced betrayal, which he knew had hurt them deeply. His team had been forced to complete the graduation test with just three people and all seven had spent a good portion of their lives trying to hunt him down and bring him to justice. While their skills and personalities eventually helped erase their shame in the public's eyes, until their dying day they had to put up with the knowledge that they used to be friends with the most hated and wanted man in the world.

After all that, he would be forced to do it all again. He was forced to walk down the same path and hurt them once more. If he tried to change too much or didn't make the same choices, the negative repercussions would be too great and the loss of life too massive. If he were to do anything else, no mater how much he wanted to, it would be the same as becoming what he had always fought against in the first place. He could not, would not, sacrifice their happy ending for his.

But he could still be a little selfish and start to repay the debt he owed them, as long as he didn't change too much then he should still be fine, timeline wise. So he set his mouth in a grim line, what he was about to do would hurt Yang, both her pride and her body, she might even end up hating him for it, but it would be better for her in the long run. Besides, it was nothing she wouldn't have learned eventually, he was just trying to make it easier and less painful for her. If he had  
to give up four years of friendship in order to insure that his friends stayed safe, he would gladly do so.

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos was worried for her partner, scratch that, she was very worried for her partner.

When she first met Jaune, she had thought he had been a bit of a goofball, his failed pick up lines on Weiss were somewhere between hilarious and embarrassing. Then she heard that he had never heard of her and, even when he learned of her status, his big reaction had simply to ignore it after a brief mention of her cereal, of all things. He had suddenly jumped from goofball to a partner she wanted.

Too many people had heard of her. Fame had it's own downsides after all. People who approached her were either in awe of her, something she didn't feel like she deserved, or wanted something from her, like Weiss Schnee obviously did. Then comes along an amusing boy whose impression of her wasn't colored by her fame. Jaune was suddenly worth his weight in gold. He was a partner that wouldn't try and use her for her fame, someone who she could eventually come to trust.

So she had set up a situation where she had the greatest chances of becoming his partner for the rest of their school life.

Pyrrha had noticed how he seemed very nervous when Ozpin had mentioned a landing strategy, he likely didn't have any experience with landings, something she did have experience with because of her unique training. So she had tried to land close to where he would and fall as quickly possible. She turned out to be right about Jaune having trouble landing, his flailing had been somewhat amusing as well. She had just enough time to launch Milo in its spear form and pin his hood to a tree before he fell to his death. After that she had rushed towards his location in order to be the first one he made eye contact with.

She had luckily made it there in time and, after pulling the spear from the tree, they had set off towards where they thought the north was. Along the way she had found out that he didn't know about Aura, a critical part of any hunter's training. Although, the fact that he managed to pass Beacon's tests without Aura meant that he might be more skilled that he appeared. She had offered to unlock his; it would go a long way in making him a better fighter. After a brief explanation he had agreed.

Though when she tried to do so, the sheer amount of power he released was staggering. So much so that she was left panting and blinking spots from her eyes for a full minute as she tried to recover. When Pyrrha finally could see again, she immediately noticed her partner passed out on the ground. Thankfully, it hadn't been hard to wake him up, though he was a bit disoriented when he awoke.

The rest of initiation had passed rather well; it had been Jaune's plan that had allowed them to kill the deathstalker and he had been made team JNPR's leader. The first week had been relatively calm, spending a lot of time trying to know each other and team RWBY as well as getting used to classes in Beacon. The only moment of great interest was Jaune had helped Ruby and Weiss with an argument, it seems that he could stop being a goofball when things got serious.

All that led up to this moment, while she hadn't seen much of Jaune's fighting style or any of his techniques during the initiation as he had focused more on defense then, she was worried because he had only had his Aura active for a week and a half, not nearly enough time to get used to it before he went up against someone like Yang.

The arena also helped Yang a good deal because it was relatively small as far as area's of combat went, with both of them being close combat types, the fight would come down to speed and power more than tactics, something that Yang obviously had in spades. Pyrrha had seen, like the rest of the class, what the blonde boxer had done to Pierce last week, something she didn't want to happen to her leader, at least the boy would still be able to walk, eventually.

Yang had already arrived at the arena; she was currently putting out a few jabs, trying to warm herself up, the smile on her face showing her excitement for the upcoming fight. The lights of the combat zone were on, shrouding the rest of the room in darkness. The big screen overhead displayed both blonde's faces and the Aura counter.

The sound of footsteps coming from the changing room silenced the whispering students. A hush fell over the room as they waited for the male blond to walk to, if not his death, then at least a lot of pain. When they finally caught sight of him though, whispers of disbelief started to be heard. Gone was the school uniform or Jaune's regular jeans and sweater combo he wore under his armor. Instead, it was replaced with a long sleeve shirt, Pyrrha tried to ignore the way it framed his muscles, and looser pants. That wasn't what had everyone so shocked though. The thing that surprised everyone was the fact that Jaune wasn't wearing his armor or even carrying his sword or shield.

He simply walked forward towards his spot in the arena, his face set into a blank mask that let nothing show, eyes focused on Yang with startling intensity. Once he reached his position, he set himself into a stance, one arm slightly in front of him, the other held at his side. Both hands open in a vague claw shape.

Pyrrha had to stop for a moment and blink, trying to make sense of what she was seeing; she barely heard the sounds of disbelief coming from both her teammates and team RWBY.

Jaune couldn't be trying to fight Yang of all people in hand-to-hand combat, with no weapon.

Could he be?

* * *

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Yang Xiao Long loved to fight. She enjoyed the thrill, the rush, of combat. The challenge it presented ignited a spark in her in a way she hadn't been able to replicate in any other way. Her entire fighting style and semblance were based around this fact. The longer the fight goes on, the more serious it gets and the more her emotions grew, the stronger she got.

So when Jaune came out and settled into his stance she was very disappointed. She hadn't been able to see her fellow blond fight before; his team had finished the death stalker before hers had finished off the Nevermore and Jaune not having been chosen in a match last week during their first combat class. She had been looking forward to a good fight against the other team's leader and by the way he hadn't backed down from her taunting, she had sort of expected it to be at least a little challenging.

But it seemed he wanted to fight her in hand-to-hand, her forte and, from what she guessed based on his sword and shield, not his. She idly considered the possibility that he was underestimating her because she was a girl, but she quickly discarded that notion, he had been there last week when she had fought so he had to know she was strong. Perhaps he just wanted to get a feel for how she fought and thought that the best way to do that was to fight her in her area of expertise.

"Are you both ready?" Ms. Goodwitch's voice broke her out of her thoughts. A nod was the only response from Jaune as his expression stayed stiff and serious. After a brief look to her opponent, she answered as well.

"I'm good to go, teach!"

Well if he wanted to see how she fought hand-to-hand, who was she to deny him?

"Very well, you may begin."

"You ready for this, Vomit Boy." She asked with a challenging smile on her face, only to not get even the slightest response from her fellow blond. She ignored the slight disappointment she felt, Yang enjoyed a little verbal byplay during her fights, it helped make things more interesting. Unfortunately it seemed that Jaune was the type that took fights seriously. Oh well, time to get this party started.

She shot off, running towards her opponent. While nowhere near her fastest speed, it was still impressive for a first year student, though she didn't use Ember Cecilia's recoil to push herself forward, she didn't want to hurt him too bad after all. Upon closing the distance, she threw a right jab at his face, trying to test the waters a little.

The jab was immediately deflected to her left by his forward arm, not having really expected it to work she was prepared and followed it up with a blow aimed at his chest. Her arm was swiftly pushed to the side as he tiled his body slightly, allowing the fist to pass by him without even touching his chest.

Slightly surprised at her strikes being deflected, she nevertheless reacted on well-trained instincts and tried to swing her arms back towards him, faster than before in order to catch him with her elbows, only to be once more deflected by the palm of his hands. Getting slightly frustrated at her failed attempts, she upped the ante. Aiming a hook to the side of his face, she threw her fist with more power behind it than before. This time, when his palms came to meet the side of her hand, she shot Ember Cecilia for the first time that match, trying to surprise him.

During matches like this, weapons and ammo were often altered in order to make certain the combatants didn't accidently kill each other or hurt themselves too badly. Swords and other sharp blades were coated with special dust, bunting them meaning that they couldn't cut or pierce, rather they could still break bones but so long as nothing too bad happened, it wouldn't be lethal. Guns had their ammo changed to concussion rounds, designed to disintegrate upon contact, meaning they didn't pierce while still causing blunt force and fighters could still use the recoil from the blast in their fighting style.

Thus, when the shot rang out, she used to recoil too pull her arm back and performed a upper cut with her other hand, releasing another shot as she neared his chin. Jaune, upon her releasing her first blast, tilted his head to the side, allowing the blast to pass by harmlessly and then leaned backwards forcing the second to miss as well.

As he pushed the arm under his chin away till it was slightly tilted towards her, she released a third shot using the recoil to try and hit him with her elbow. Her elbow was then grabbed, but she didn't lose a second and span, releasing another shot caused her arm to jerk forcing him to let go before he did anything. Using the momentum of her shot and spin, she aimed a spin kick at his side. As her leg approached his side, aiming for his floating ribs, his arm lashed out, wrapping around the extended limb and, using her own momentum against her, threw her into the air.

Not having expected the retaliation, she spun out of control for a moment before recovering and firing three shots from her shotgun gauntlets towards her foe and using the recoil to steady her fall. Jaune ducked a little, allowing the first shell to pass over his head before turning his upper body to the side, minimizing his profile and allowing the other two blasts to pass by harmlessly.

Upon landing, Yang had to blink as she came to the realization she was right back where she had started on the other side of the arena. The entire exchange of blows hadn't even lasted ten seconds. Through her adrenalin fueled eyes she noticed a few things. Frist, Jaune hadn't moved, not a single step and throughout the fight his eyes had never left hers, not once had his deep blues looked anywhere other than her own lilac eyes. Her blows had been dogged and deflected without his having to even look at them, like he knew where they were going to be. She also noticed that he hadn't even thrown a single fist, not one single blow was aimed her way.

When she realized this, her smile grew. She felt excitement start to bubble up and she knew that her Aura was starting to leak, giving her the appearance of flames traveling along her hair. It seemed that Vomit Boy knew how to fight after all.

* * *

Unless your fighting style was pure hand-to-hand or you had some major trick, fighting Yang Xiao Long in pure close quarter combat with no weapons or other a specialized semblance was suicidal, even Jaune knew that.

Jaune did however have some experience, more than most, fighting against great CQC specialists. As he started to grow in ability and experience he discovered what a weakness relying too heavily on your weapon could be. Too many times he had been disarmed, costing him a match or sometimes endangering his life. So he had set out to rectify it, he had first enlisted Ren's help. While his only male teammate had been more than wiling to provide instructions and become a sparring partner, when Yang had found out the he had gone to Ren for help instead of her, she hadn't been very happy. The beating that followed had been legendary.

Though Jaune couldn't figure out why she had been upset about it, as he had thought she wouldn't have had time to help because she had her own team to take care of. After he thought about it for a while he realized she would probably be using him as a punching bag. By the second year they had already discovered his semblance, or at least what they thought was his semblance, he had already used it three times on others by that point, one of them Yang, so they had definite proof by then. The ability to heal him self and others from anything short of an instant fatality made him the perfect sparing partner. Especially for someone like Yang who had trouble holding back.

So, for three years he had been tutored, spared against and beaten black and blue by two hand-to-hand specialists. They both had very different styles of course, Ren fought in conjunction with his twin pistols, Stormflower, using speed and nimbleness to avoid damage, able to deal a lot of damage to weaker opponents, using acrobatics and aura strikes in order to target weaknesses, he was also very well versed in martial arts, he preferred precision rather than power. Yang, on the other hand, fought with a mixture of boxing and kickboxing, using Ember Cecilia as both an extra bit of damage and as a speed boost, she largely focused on powerful hits designed to take down tough opponents. She was almost berserker like, the longer the fight went on and the more her emotions entered into the fray, the stronger she and her Aura would get. She was able to take a hit like nobody he knew (he excluded himself because he would still take damage from the hit, it would only heal afterwards).

Training with the likes of those two for three years meant that anyone would improve after the many, many, _many,_ beatings he had received.

Neither of their fighting styles was really suited for Jaune though, he was nowhere near as strong as Yang or as fast and nimble as Ren, so he had to come up with one himself. He had settled for a form of bastardized aikido, keeping a big part of the holds and throws while also adding more deflection on defense. All his training and practice, the constants spars, the beatings and even the couple of times he went to the dojo in Vale still didn't change the fact that he had never won against either Yang or Ren in hand-to-hand combat. Not. A. Single. Time.

That would be the case again had this been the Yang Xiao Long he knew, but she wasn't.

This wasn't the woman he had seen decimate hordes of grim during the great migrations. She wasn't the same woman he had seen destroy mountains in her rage. She wasn't the Yang he had seen one shot a Goliath and curb stomp an entire herd. This was the Yang Xiao Long that would eventually become the one he knew. She would undoubtedly become the one he knew, it simply unthinkable for her to stop before she became the titan that had kingdoms falling over themselves to get on her good side. But as she was right now, she barely even compared to what she would become. She would eventually surpass what he knew of hand-to-hand right now, likely before even third year, but for now he was simply more experienced and better in CQC.

Jaune had hundreds of spars against Yang as she grew and developed her style, the only person who knew more about the way she fought was herself so it was relatively to predict where she was going to target without even having to look as she hadn't gotten rid of her tells yet. His body was more advanced than hers and had greater muscle memory based upon almost a century's worth of battles against legions upon legions of Grimm and the bounty hunters that often came after his head. As it was right now, Yang was severely outmatched. Jaune just hoped that when she did reach the point where she would once again beat him hand-to-hand that she wouldn't kill him slowly and painfully.

The knight once again focused on his opponent, she was now smirking wildly, having started to get into the fight, her Aura starting to fluctuate, giving her the golden glow that looked like flames dancing across her beautiful hair. Jaune never told her it directly, for fear of his manhood, but it was when she was like this, eyes brimming with passion and excitement, hair glowing like a golden sun, that she was at her most beautiful, like a goddess given flesh.

It made what he was about to do even more horrible.

Making certain that he still had what he needed hidden away in his sleeve, he rushed at her, going on the offensive for the first time in the fight.

Yang's smile widened, excitement shining in her eyes, she shot off as well, rushing forward at a far faster speed than the first time she did so, she angled her arms behind her releasing a couple shots from Ember Cecilia in order to further increase her speed. They clashed in a flurry of fists and feet.

Deflecting a kick, Jaune lashed out with a fist hitting her in the stomach, that didn't faze her in the least as she aimed a fist at his face, forcing him to lean backwards in order to dodge before lifting a leg to kick her away. She hopped backwards dodging before rushing back with a couple jabs towards his chest, releasing blasts from her gauntlets. Having known it was coming before she released, Jaune managed to wrap his hands around her upper arms and aim them towards the ground, forcing the blast to hit their feet, the recoil releasing her from his hold and forcing both of them off the ground. Not slowing down in the least, Yang fired more blasts towards her opponent as he was in the air where he had no ability to move. In a move that was both a great demonstration of flexibility and acrobatics, Jaune twisted himself in the air, allowing the rounds to fly by him and hit the wall of the arena.

Both blonds landed at the same time, shooting off again towards each other. This time Jaune was the first one to launch an attack. Aiming to hit her on her shoulder, she tiled her body before aiming at his chest with her other arm, unaware it left her own open as he lashed out in order to capitalize. Using more strength than before, he managed to hit her in the solar plexus, knocking the air form her and allowing him get a hold of her.

As he wrapped his arms around hers, he idly noticed that this would have been the perfect time to end the fight; a little effort and he could break her arms or, if he twisted a little, dislocated her shoulders. But that wouldn't convey what he was trying to show her so instead he used his hold to launch her into the air before jumping after her and aiming a blow at her head that he knew she would be able to dodge but would still accomplish his goal.

Yang, having recovered from the loss of air was able to twist herself by using her shotgun gauntlets as a means of recoil. She managed to barely avoid the blow to the back of her head, it passing not inches below her skull, she once more used Ember Cecilia's recoil in order to give her more distance and time to recover. She flipped over herself and turned to face Jaune who had landed as well and decided not to pursue her.

"Ha Ha Ha." Yang couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up from her chest. This was fun. This was exciting. Two people who danced with their fists in a blur of adrenaline and passion, this was exactly what she had been hopping for when she enrolled in Beacon, killing Grimm was just a bonus compared to this joy she felt. Who knew Vomit Boy had it in him?

"Come on Jauney Boy, show me what you got." Her taunting fell on deaf ears however as she noticed that for the first time since the start of the fight. Instead he was looking at his clenched hand with the same stony expression he wore since the start of the fight. Yang too looked at his had, trying to figure out what was going on before she noticed he was holing something in his fists, something that shone yellow under the lighting of the arena.

It took her a moment to realize what it was, but once she did she felt all her previous joy disappear, gone was the euphoria, replaced with a burning rage. She barely realized that her Aura picked up, that her hair now danced with a fiery flame or that her eyes now shone a bright crimson. As it stood she was too angry to focus on anything than destroying her opponent for what he had done. Yang only released an angry shout as she shot forward to beat Jaune into a bloody pulp.

"You MONSTER!"

* * *

When Pyrrha saw that Jaune planed to fight Yang with only his fists and no armor, she had thought him mad. The first few seconds into the fight had quickly divested her of that opinion however.

Jaune was good, terrifyingly so for someone who use hand-to-hand as their main style of combat. Pyrrha had fought many times against people who used their fists as their main weapon, either in tournaments or back at sanctum. Because of this she knew that Jaune wasn't someone who simply decided to drop his weapons and start slugging it out. The way he fought, the way he moved, spoke of not only long hours of practice but also live combat experience.

Pyrrha knew that if she were to lose her weapon and shield she would be, while not completely helpless as she still had her semblance and some hand-to-hand technique, she would be extremely crippled in her ability to fight to her full extent. Close quarter combat was just not something she had focused on, because if she was ever disarmed in battle she could just use her semblance in order to summon her weapons back.

She also knew that Jaune was just as good with his sword and shield as he was in using his fists and feet. She had seen him fight the Deathstalker and knew that he had been holding something back in the fight. She had been right beside him for almost the entire fight, blocking its pincers and deflecting its tail when possible. It had really registered till after the fight had been over but once she looked back on it she noticed a couple oddities, the first thing she noticed was that no matter what the scorpion had hit him with, he hadn't moved an inch, even when he was smacked head on with stinger. Also, throughout the fight he hadn't looked all that concerned, the look on his face, if she dared to say it, was almost _bored_.

His ability with his sword and shield as well as CQC meant he had to have been training for years to get that good. As she thought about it, Pyrrha could see how he would have had to be good if he managed to pass Beacon's entrance exam without Aura, from what she understood he hadn't attended a combat school either. That meant that he would have had to train himself to the bone either by himself or with limited help to get were he was today and without Aura to help heal him after a training session he would have been completely exhausted. Pyrrha knew that she was always dead tired after training even with Aura to cushion the blows and heal her wounds and fatigue. Jaune was also very smart and knowledgeable, he had been the first to finish the assignments had received and had helped the others in their group with theirs, meaning that for all he would have had to do to get as strong as he was today he hadn't sacrificed the time it took to study.

The sheer effort that would be needed to accomplish all that, the determination, was something that made Pyrrha look to her team leader in awe. She was no stranger to hard work, she wouldn't have gotten to where she was today without it, but even what she did must pale in comparison to what Jaune had gone through to get to where he was today.

The only thing that confused her was that, with all his skill, intelligence and determination, how come it hadn't shone through until after she had activated his Aura?

Pyrrha thought about it for a moment as she watched the fight continue. It was likely a bad case of nerves. She had heard form Yang and Ruby that he suffered from motion sickness on the plane ride over and had spent the time throwing up. That had probably not helped any nerves he had about his first day after being accepted into Beacon. Also she didn't think he knew anyone apart from their group which meant that he had no friends in the school to rely on. All that pressure must have caused him to over compensate with false confidence, then Weiss's harsh attitude must have also hurt, making him even more nervous impairing his abilities. It probably took the awakening of his Aura to calm him down enough for his skills to shine through.

Deciding that was it, the Spartan turned her attention back to the fight, watching as both combatants landed after another exchange of blows. Jaune's face was still set in stone as it had been since the beginning of the match, something that unnerved his partner if she was being honest. Yang on the other hand was obviously enjoying herself, her Aura dancing around her as if she were on fire; she even let out a laugh.

"Come on Jauney Boy, show me what you got." Pyrrha's leader didn't seem to hear her however, as he stared at something in his hands. It took a moment for the crowd to realize what the blond held but when they did, they paled in fear as Yang's Aura exploded around her.

"You MONSTER!"

They still remembered what happened to Pierce when he had damaged Yang's hair.

Poor, poor Pierce

* * *

Blake Belladonna was not the paranoid type, no matter what anybody said behind her back.

She simply liked to be well informed about what other people were doing while simultaneously remaining unknown. This had stemmed from her past as a White Fang member, always on the lookout, always on guard and ready for action. Because she had lied about her history and race upon entering into Beacon, she was naturally initially wary of anybody that could expose her secret. Blake had been a bit suspicious around just about everyone from Ms. Goodwitch to her own partner Yang. It certainly hadn't helped her nerves to be put on the same team as the Schnee heiress.

Thankfully most of her fears had been put to rest by her partner. Yang was not somebody that you could say no to; if you didn't want to be friends with her she would simply storm into your life and force you to be friends with her. She was very out going and that was something that Blake could admire, even if she felt Yang was still a little naïve. Thanks to Yang's efforts, Blake had started to relax a bit more around her team and team JNPR, who seamed were glued at the hip. Besides, it had already been a week and a half since the start of term and nobody had proven to be too suspicious.

With one exception!

Jaune Arc, initially, before initiation, Blake had observed him like she had all others, wary for any potential threat. It had only taken her a minute of observation to dismiss him as anything but a buffoon that got in way over his head. He didn't carry himself as a warrior; he seemed to be awkward in social events and just seemed plain weird at times. Then initiation passed by and that had changed. He had been made leader of team JNPR, something Blake was a little leery of, but it wasn't weirder than having a fifteen year old as team leader instead, and overnight he seemed to change, he walked with a calm confidence now, as if he knew noting could harm him but he didn't go out of his way to show it. Blake had no idea of his combat abilities, having been rather busy dealing with the Nevermore, but something about the way he held himself was different than it was going into the Emerald Forest. It took Blake exactly four days of observing him to pinpoint what felt off about him.

He didn't make a sound when he walked!

Inside the school was one thing, the stone floor wasn't very noisy so it wasn't inconceivable that somebody with enough balance could traverse it and not make a sound without actively trying to suppress the noise, Blake did it herself from habit alone. But when both teams were outside, on the lawn studying or simply walking the grounds exploring, she had realized that her sense of hearing only detected six people with her. There was no sound of parting grass, the crunch of gravel or breaking of branches that littered the ground, all things her sensitive faunus hearing would have picked up. Blake realized something even more disquieting once she started to pay more attention to the other team's leader, he wasn't breathing! Or at least, she couldn't hear him breathing, if it wasn't for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, she would have thought he died.

That demonstrated a massive measure of skill in stealth capabilities, something that even Blake wasn't able to accomplish, yet. Jaune had training, or experience, in sneaking and stealth, why and where were questions she would like answered. The simple fact is Jaune was not built for stealth; he simply didn't have her flexibility or grace that came from her part feline heritage. He wore armor and used a sword and shield, not the best suited for sneaking up on people.

There were also his mannerisms that were a little off putting to.

He adapted extremely well to be able to get along anybody he was with. He could keep up with the hyperactive Nora and then start calmly talking to Ren about homework. He traded puns with Yang and helped Ruby with her homework. Weiss didn't even dislike him, after he had patched things up between her and Ruby: Blake had over heard them discussing the benefits of Free Market Economy between nations. They had used words that passed right over her head like; Social Surplus, Tariffs, Price Floors and Monopoly.

His own partner was obviously smitten with the boy, something Jaune didn't seem to notice as he kept asking if she was sick whenever he did anything sweet. Even Blake herself, didn't dislike him, he was often in the library reading when he wasn't spending time with the teams or doing his homework, sometimes he would engage her in discussions about the books she read that would eventually lead off in tangent until, like on Saturday, they stayed up until three in the morning discussing philosophy on everything from the nature of the Grimm to Faunus rights and whether White Fang was beneficial or simply making it harder on all faunus.

Jaune seemed to know exactly how to talk and get along with everybody very well; there was something about him that felt very familiar, like a friend one hadn't seen in decades.

Perhaps too well!

It was because of this that Blake was naturally a bit suspicious, it seemed like he was a little too perfect, too knowledgeable about how to get along Team RWBY and Team JNPR. If it weren't for that fact, Blake knew very well that Jaune could have been considered her best friend along with Yang. It was only how quickly he grown close to her and the others that off put her a little bit. She decided to wait a bit, observe him a bit more before she did anything. Blake would keep talking to him and be friendly but would wait for the other shoe to drop. If nothing happened then she would accept him for what he appeared to be, a charismatic young man.

Her decision to observe him paid dividends when he was finally set to fight in combat class. Blake was very confident in Yang and her ability to fight, so thought her partner wouldn't have any problem getting Jaune to fight his hardest, the most worrying thing that could happen was that Yang would get too carried away and Jaune would have to spend a night in the Medical Bay.

Then Jaune had stepped into the arena without weapons or armor and all bets were off. He had a steely look on his face, the look of absolute concentration. (It also made Blake blush and her pulse quicken, though she refused to acknowledge that fact.)

Blake had at first been disturbed by the seemingly arrogant and suicidal actions, but when the first blows were traded she realized that Jaune wasn't arrogant or suicidal, he was confident. He had a reason to be confident.

He managed to fight off Yang, one of the strongest of their year, in only hand-to-hand without being hit. That took not only hours upon hours of practice, it took experience, fighting people in real combat, and something Blake was very familiar with from her past history.

Then Jaune had damaged Yang's hair and the entire thing had spiraled out of control.

It didn't take a genius to realize how much Yang valued her hair; it was one of the first things someone learned about her.

So when her hair had been damaged Yang had flown into an absolute rage. She had launched herself at her opponent, intending to cave his face in. Only that wasn't what happened.

Jaune had avoided her initial attack and deflected the ones that followed, before landing his own punch in her chest.

That had been half an hour ago and the two were still going strong.

Long fights were things of myth that people tell to make themselves look better. The only time a fight lasts a long time is if there are many people involved or if both combatants are equal in skill and ability. Most of the time, fights are decided in minutes, if not seconds as the stronger of the two fighter will press the advantage in order to end the fight as quickly as possible. So what was different about this match hat made it take so long?

Yang was still the picture of rage, face set in a scowl and hair wreathed in golden flame. Jaune simply weathered the storm, deflecting and dodging her blows and occasionally launching his own attacks that always landed a hit. It was like a dance, twisting and turning, bending and throwing. It would have been romantic if Yang weren't trying to disembowel the boy.

Blake finally shook free from her paralyzed viewing of the match to reflect a little on what was going on. The time set for combat class was almost up, this fight was the longest so far in the class. Most fights only lasted around five minutes, ten at maximum. The reason was because of the simple fact that fighting was tiring, somebody was bound to make a mistake eventually, allowing his or her opponent to win. So why hadn't that happened here yet.

Though she was reluctant to admit it, based on some loyalty to her partner, Jaune was obviously the better fighter; he still hadn't been hit properly once yet while landing blows upon blows on Yang. By any means Yang should have lost by now but it seemed that Jaune was holding back from delivering the final blow. Still, Yang should have run low on Aura a long time ago.

Looking at the Aura readers on the board Blake was unsurprised to find Jaune's had not lowered in the slightest. It was because he had yet to take a hit or use his Aura for anything at all. What did surprise the disguised faunus was the fact the Yang's Aura was ear full as well.

That shouldn't be possible!

Yang had been leaking Aura like a faucet, covering her in flickering flames and enhancing her for over a half hour. As Blake watched, the bar that represented Yang's Aura started to lower, before jumping back up. The process repeated itself for a time, lowering slightly before jumping back to full. It took Blake a minute to realize what was going on.

Every time Jaune landed a hit, Yang's energy would replenish and she would come back stronger and faster than before. It was almost as if taking hits made Yang more powerful.

Was Jaune the cause of this? Was he healing Yang in some way while they fought?

Blake immediately discarded that thought because Jaune still hadn't used his Aura at all, and healing Yang would have taken at least a noticeable chunk from his bar. So this had to be because of Yang. Could it be her semblance? Blake had thought it had been fire manipulation but what if it wasn't?

What if her semblance was the ability to get stronger by taking hits?

That was a frightening thought. Such a powerful ability had to have some downsides. Yang probably didn't directly heal from blows, simply turned them into Aura so she probably still wouldn't be able to fight if her bones got broken or a debilitating blow was delivered. But with the amount of Aura she would posses as the fight went on she would get hardier and hardier, more tough to take down. Yang would be best fighting opponents that used blunt attacks that didn't do too much damage at once but rather focused on damage over time; hand-to-hand was probably the best people for her to fight.

Come to think of it, Jaune as he was fighting right now, seemed to be her perfect opponent. He was better than her in close quarters combat, but seemed perfectly willing to allow her to grow stronger. What was he trying to accomplish? Everything he did seemed designed to prolong the match, avoiding blows rather than blocking, only hitting Yang when her Aura started to wane and purposely avoiding her opening for a more debilitating attack. He could have learned about her semblance by watching her fight with Piece last week, before the unmentionable had happened the large boy had landed a few hits on the blonde so it wasn't inconceivable that Jaune had picked up such a small detail and decided to test whether his hypothesis was right. But if he was only trying to test whether he was right then he could have ended the match a while ago, having no need to continue the fight.

Watching as Jaune ducked under a kick before hitting Yang in the leg, Blake tried to come up with the reason for his actions. Jaune wasn't looking for a weakness, his eyes having only left Yang's when he had damaged her hair. In fact, though he looked resolved about something, he didn't seem to be in any hurry, content to extend the match for as long as he needed.

He was waiting for something, Blake realized.

Not an opening in Yang's defense, the blonde having given up all pretense of defense in her anger, but something else.

Blake finally got a clue to what Jaune had been waiting for when Yang retreated for a moment to grab two new clips of ammo for her gauntlets for the fifth time if Blake was not mistaken.

Having reloaded and ready to fight once more, Yang ran back towards her opponent, ready to cave in his face. Half way across the arena, she stopped.

Just stopped.

One moment she was rushing forwards, the next, Yang's red eyes had widened before shifting back to lilac before she let out a pure, unadulterated scream of pain as she collapsed on the ground.

It only took a second of the blonde wreathing in pain before Jaune rushed to her side, a blow to the back of the head knocking her out before she could continue to scream.

"YANG!"

Ruby immediately shot forward to reach her sister, the rest of her team and team JNPR not far behind. As they rushed to their teammates' sides, Jaune bent down to pick his fellow blond up and set her in his arms, bridal style.

"Winner, Jaune Arc."

Ignoring the announcement, the two teams arrived at their friend's sides, Ruby having arrived first immediately asked.

"What happened? Is she all right? Why did she scream? Yang's not hurt is she?"

"I don't think she's too hurt, it seems that she was just exhausted." Though he said it calmly, Jaune looked anything but relieved. He had lost his stony face but now seemed to have a look of deep resignation.

"Her screaming wasn't because of exhaustion!" Though she remained a bit impassive there was not mistaking the heat that entered Blake's voice. She was worried for her partner and Jaune didn't seem to be forth coming about what he knew on the subject.

"I don't think she is too hurt but just to be safe I will bring her to the nurse's office if that is alright miss Goodwitch?" He said that looking over their shoulders. Behind them stood the teacher who nodded to Jaune.

"Indeed mister Arc please bring miss Long to the nurses office and return immediately."

As Jaune made to leave with his opponent in his arms, Blake spoke up. Friend or not, there was something mysterious about Jaune Arc that made Blake curious.

"I'll come with you then."

"You will do no such thing! I can understand you being worried about your partner but class is still in session. If you are still worried then you can visit her in the medical bay later, for now she is fine in the mister Arc's hands."

Suppressing a grimace at her teacher's words, the disguised cat faunus watched as her partner was carried out of the room under the worried eyes of her teammates. Whispers were already starting to spread about the surprising fight. No doubt by the end of the day a whole new slew of rumors would begin.

* * *

Jaune let a small grimace of pain pass through. There was a price to pay for everything, healing something was very costly.

Yang was far more injured than he had let on to the others.

Yang's semblance was a very powerful ability. The ability to turn kinetic energy from blows into power had amazing potential. Potential that Yang would achieve in the future. The Yang that Jaune knew had become so powerful that if she didn't control her strength then she accidentally destroyed buildings.

For all the power she would receive, as she was now she had two major weaknesses.

The first was her emotions. Yang used them to power her semblance, as she got more and more involved in the fight, the stronger she became. The same happened when he got angry. The problem was that she might get too involved in the fight, loosing herself to her emotions; openings would start to appear that an opponent could exploit.

Yang's second weakness as she was right now was something most people wouldn't realize unless you really thought about her power. Absorbing energy to make yourself more powerful was all well and good, but what if your body can't handle the energy you absorb. It starts to build up over time, making the body stronger but if it builds up too quickly then what Jaune called Overpowering was likely to occur. The body starts to tear itself apart from the power it absorbs, as the energy has nowhere to go.

In Jaune's original timeline they hadn't even known such a thing could happen until it was almost too late. Both teams had taken a joint mission in their second year for extra credit. There had been a massive outbreak in Ursa that they had been sent to put down. The fighting had been going on for over two hours, the number of Grimm far more than initially thought, so they had decided to fight in waves in order to get moments of rest.

The exception had been Yang.

She had been fighting for the entire time because she was overcome with rage at her hair being damaged early in the fight. She had refused to back down because she was so into the fight, so when the Overpowering came she had been neck deep in Ursa. One moment she was bashing two skulls together, the next she had cried out in pain as energy began to tear her body apart. Thankfully Jaune had been close by and had already discovered his ability to heal others, so when an Ursa had taken advantage of her moment of weakness to land a slash on her from hip to shoulder, he had been close enough to heal her so that there wasn't even a scar.

Unfortunately, Jaune had under estimated how much damage the she had taken as, while he knew about the open wound, the shattered bodes and ruptured organs had come as a surprise. Piled on top of the fact that he still hadn't completely understood what his semblance was, while had was healing her and blinded from the pain another Ursa had gotten behind him and lashed out with it's own strike. He had managed to heal Yang at the cost of the pain as well as being nearly bifurcated. Jaune had enough Aura left over to reverse enough damage to live long enough to reattach his separated parts. Though he had been knocked out and would have died if it weren't for his teammates' help. Just another thing he owed them.

When he had woken up in Beacon's hospital two days later, it was to the news that he might never be able to walk again and should be thankful he was still alive. Jaune had then set about reversing the damage done to him using what he knew of his semblance. He had reversed almost everything in order to make certain there were no lasting consequences; he was able to live like it had never happened. Though no matter how far back he reversed his body, the scar never left, something he had never been able to figure out why.

Instead of reminiscing of the past, Jaune set his attention to continue healing Yang, leaning up against the wall in order to support himself for the pain.

There was a price to be paid for healing someone. Because what Jaune did wasn't really healing but reversing the time on the person's body until before they had been damaged, he had to understand and live through everything the body did between the point where the reversal started and the time where he let it end, and he had to do it all in one second.

Because Jaune had decided to heal Yang until she was just like before the fight, he over half an hour of compressed pain to deal with. Jaune felt every punch, every kick, all her exhaustion and pain. Everything that was reversed Jaune felt in that split second. To most people pain is spread out over time, meaning it is taken in little dosses compared to the big picture.

Imagine spraining your ankle. While it heals it is mostly annoying, sending occasional bouts of pain through the nerves of the body towards the brain, and it will do this any number of times a day over the course of two to three days. Now imagine if you instead received all the pain you ever would from that sprained ankle, but you received it in a single moment, all of it compounded and compressed into one second of blinding pain.

But Jaune wasn't healing a sprained ankle. He was healing half and hour's worth of punches and kicks all at the same time. To Jaune, just those blows at one second would have felt like he was being hit with a house launched by a Goliath.

That wasn't the worst however. Overpowering was what happened when there was too much energy for the body to handle, bones broke, organs ruptured, it was only because Yang's hair was the root of her power otherwise her skull and brain would have been damaged as well. Before Jaune healed her, Yang had been slowly dying from the injuries received by her Overpowering for about thirty seconds. So Jaune felt all the blows as well as the exhaustion on top of half a minute of having the body tear itself apart, he felt the pain in a moment but that moment seemed like an eternity.

When Jaune finished blinking spots from his eyes, he noticed that he had slid down the wall to the floor, Yang still lying on his lap, no longer unconscious but rather sleeping. She even started to snore.

Tightening his hold on the brawler, Jaune stood up before continuing on his way to the med bay, though it was no longer needed. On the way, the blond marveled at the damage Overpowering did. Jaune had a high pain tolerance, he had to because of all the healing he used to do without letting his teammates it hurt him. Jaune had never told anyone the cost that came with healing them, not willing to have them hide injuries that he could help with. Pain could be ignored but damage couldn't be. Because of all the injuries he healed, Jaune slowly got used to pain, pain was fleeting, nothing that he couldn't handle. But the pain from Overpowering had to rank three or four on Jaune's most painful things he had ever healed.

Noticing he had arrived in the med bay, Jaune pushed the large doors open. Looking around the room, he didn't see the doctor so decided to put Yang in a bed himself.

As he laid her down he finally noticed.

Yang had stopped snoring.

She was awake.

She was looking at him.

She was looking at him as he laid her down on a bed.

"This isn't what it looks like!"

* * *

Yang was comfortable. Very comfortable.

Her eyes closed, she didn't want to wake up. She simply wanted to bask in what she was feeling right now. The smell of the forest and metal, an odd contrast, was so familiar and comforting that Yang wanted to lay in his arms forever.

Wait!

Whose arms?

Slowly opening her eyes, Yang took in the vision of blond hair and blue eyes. Jaune was carrying her, she blearily realized. Carrying her towards the infirmary based on the large doors they were approaching. How had this happed?

Then she remembered.

Combat class, the fight, and the lock of hair in Jaune's hand, followed by half an hour of rage. Then the pain, blinding in its intensity but it was only for a moment before everything went blissfully black.

What had happened?

"This isn't what it looks like!"

Blinking slightly, Yang realized she had been staring at Jaune and he had noticed she was awake. Still in his arms, she slowly turned her head to look at the bed he was about to put her in. Realizing what was going on, Yang let a mischievous smile cross her face before whipping it away. This was too good to pass up.

"You know, Vomit boy, if you wanted to get me into bed, you could have just asked. No need to knock me out."

Yang tried to paint her face the picture of innocence as she wrapped her legs around his and forced him onto the bed, her arms at the side of his head pinning him down. As she stared into his eyes she idly took note of the fact that this was normally further than she went when she teased someone.

Yang wasn't oblivious to what had been going on during the last week. Jaune seemed to get along with everyone in the little group and Yang was not an exception. Jaune was the only other person who appreciated her puns and was willing to trade barbs with her. Pyrrha's growing infatuation was a little obvious; Yang recognized the signs of an early crush.

Yang just hadn't see why though.

Yang had never really dated, teasing and flirting were one thing but she had never really found a guy that had the qualities she was looking for, she also had to take care of Ruby, thus making getting into a relationship very low on her priorities.

Despite that Yang knew what she wanted. Jaune was many things, sweet and caring from what she heard from Ruby, intelligent as he seemed to know all the answers to the homework, charismatic it took a lot of charisma to get all the different personalities on both teams to like you in only one week and he wasn't bad looking either, though Yang would need to get a look at his body properly to get a final judgment on that.

All these things were good qualities to have but it was not what Yang was looking for in a romantic partner.

What she wanted was something a little simpler but infinitely more complex. She wanted confidence; she wanted a man that had the ability to make her heart race in excitement, somebody that got into the passion as much as she did. Yang wanted somebody that could both fight by her side and still fight her to a stand still.

While these looked like simple things to want, many boys had just fallen flat. Yang had been the top of her class in Signal, even at Beacon other boys her age simply weren't up to snuff when compared to her. She had been a little disappointed but hadn't let it get her down.

Then Jaune had kicked her ass six ways to Sunday.

Even though she had lost herself in her emotions Yang had still be cognizant. She had felt every punch and kick. She had watched as he dodged, blocked and deflected every attack she had. As the battle continue, Yang had never felt more powerful than she did at that moment, her semblance working overtime in order to absorb the power she was receiving from his hits. It had been the longest and most difficult fight she had ever been in, Yang had never even landed a hit despite going all out. It had been amazing, though she was still mad about her hair, it had lead to her experiencing the most marvelous fight, and she had lost herself in the moment. The only way it could have gone better was if Jaune and her had trade witty remarks while fighting.

Jaune had still been holding back though, he hadn't used his weapons or armor during the fight, he also hadn't exploited the openings she had let slip in her rage. He hadn't fought at his full ability, someday though; Yang would be strong enough to fight him at his best. It would be glorious!

But that was for the future.

Right now, Yang lay on top of Jaune, her lilac eyes stared into his blue ones, during the fight his eyes had looked like cold steel, harsh and uncaring, now they looked like a summer sky, warm and inviting, at least until they started to twinkle with mischievousness.

Jaune's arms snaked upwards from his sides, his fingers dancing along her rib cage. He was tickling her, she realized in a fit of giggles. Too late however, he was already free and was pressing the advantage as he sensed a moment of weakness.

"Stop! Hehehe, no fair! Ha!"

He didn't let up, for over a minute he continued to torture her until her sides were hurting from laughter, he seemed to know exactly where to tickle.

Once he stopped, both panting from breath, Yang asked the question that was plaguing her mind.

"Why?"

"Why what?" He looked confused at her question.

"Why did you prolong the fight like that when you could have won easily? You were much better than me!" Realization dawned on his face before he shook his head slowly.

"Your wrong about that. I could have certainly won the fight earlier but it was not because I am better than you. I am simply more experienced. If you keep pushing yourself and get more experience fighting different opponents then you will be much better than me by the time you graduate." He wasn't just saying those words to make her feel better, Yang realized; he honestly believed that she was going to be better than him. "Besides, that fight was about who was better and wasn't, I fought like that because I wanted to show you your limits so that you wouldn't make mistakes in the field when your life is in danger."

"My limits?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I noticed last week that your Aura replenished every time you take a hit, you would get stronger as well. I theorized that it was your semblance." Yang nodded so he continued. "Such a powerful ability had to have a down side so I started thinking about it. I asked myself what would happen if you absorbed too much power."

"Too much power?" Yang had never really thought about it, the possibility of having too much power seemed absurd.

"Your body can only handle so much power before it breaks down. You heard about those people whose muscles got so bit and so strong that they couldn't bend their arms without pulverizing their bones?" Yang nodded again. "It is the same concept. Only instead of your bones not being able to handle the force, it was your entire body that was damaged. A good analogy would be that you are a balloon." At Yang's dirty look sent his way Jaune simply rolled his eyes before continuing. "The more air that is blown into a balloon the bigger it gets, the same with you and power. But if you blow too much then the balloon bursts. You get it?"

"Yeah, I think I got it. So my limit is half an hour of absorbing hits?" Jaune shook his head once more, his hands unconsciously petting her hair, something she enjoyed so long as it didn't get damaged.

"Not really. If we continue with the balloon analogy then when a balloon looses its air it shrinks back down. But it is still looser; pardon the choice of words, than it was before. That is how you will get stronger. Every time you fight, some of the power you absorb stays with you, which is one of the reasons you are so strong. That strength stays with you and makes your body stronger. The stronger the body, the more power it can absorb without it hurting you. So, in order to get stronger, keep doing what you were doing before. Keep fighting strong opponents and practicing with your teammates. Keep trying to control your emotions in your fights, it will make it so you grow quickly."

Yang nodded her head, a little overcome about the information she had received. She was a little shocked that all it had taken was a single fight for Jaune to discover a weakness about her semblance that she hadn't even known about. "You are going to help me!" It wasn't a question or even an order, it was a statement to which Jaune nodded.

The knight looked to the clock over the door of the infirmary, noticing that combat class was almost over; he started to get up to leave. He didn't want their teams to come visit only to seem them on the same bed; he would never live it down. His hand stopped running through Yang's hair as he rose, much to her disappointment.

His fellow blonde got up as well. Reaching onto one of the side shelves she grabbed a mirror and started to look over her hair.

"What are you doing?" He looked a little bemused at her actions.

"I am trying to see how much damage was done!"

"There's no need." Yang turned to look at him to see him pulling some hair from the inside of his sleeve. Blond hair, not golden! "I needed to get you angry but I know how much you value your hair so I simply pulled out some of mine before the fight." He looked a little sheepish as he admitted it.

Gods damn it!

Yang was starting to see what Pyrrha saw in him!

* * *

**So what did you think?**

**Is it worth writing the whole thing? If yes then I think I can have the first chapter done before March.**

**Most can tell that this is a bit of a time travel story, but I plan to make my own spin on the cliché. You can get hints about what happened within this chapter. (The name of the story I got from the old Shrek 2 PlayStation 2 game that I played years ago. (Donkey for the win)).**

**I am also trying to portray the characters right. **

**Blake being a little paranoid upon first entering Beacon seems normal if you consider her background. Yang and Blake are two characters that don't get enough fleshing out I feel. I hope portrayed Pyrrha's desire to be Jaune's partner in a way that could happen based on what we saw in the series.**

**That being said, if you like the story then Favorite and Follow it, f you have any advise then review. I will also recommend going to have a look at my other Fiction; it is an original one I started that is based off of the Legendary Moonlight Sculptor.**

**Hopped you enjoyed,**

_**Reiders out.**_


	3. Update

I have been asked for a while now about why it is taking me so long to update my stories and if they are dead or if I am dead myself, so I am just going to copy paste what I responded to one of my reviewers:

All my stories are still alive, and still tormenting me in my brain, but real life is kicking my ass. Over the last months I have been involved in a car accident that destroyed my computer and put me in the hospital for months. Then I my body starts to shut down on its self, leading to the discovery that I have type 1 diabetes, which is extremely rare for someone of my age and physical health, if I it had been discovered only one more day late I would have entered a diabetic coma that I likely would have never woken up from, the doctors were shocked I wasn't dead already. I have also moved twice and have a new job, that I really enjoy but takes up ten hours a day. I do plan to take some time off this late summer so expect chapters by then at the latest though there might be updates before as I have about half a chapter for each of my stories and a few one shots already done. Half a chapter meaning about four-thousand words. All in all, I am slowly recovering and don't plan on quitting my stories any time yet. Especially not Fate Freedom, The Beast or Hero Time as they torment me constantly in my mind.


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